Minding the gap: an analysis of hopeful, mindfulorganizing in the Chilean miners’ undergroundjourney from collapse to resilience

2025. Taylor and Francis. Received 21 May 2022, Accepted 18 Aug 2025, Published online: 28 Oct 2025

Matías Sanfuentes, Francisco Valenzuela & Rita Davidson

Abstract:

Due to its reliance on the rational principles of strategic analysis, crisis management scholarship often operates under the assumption that the future is predictable, and therefore that the effectiveness of resilience during organizational breakdowns can be anticipated. This study presents an empirically and theoretically informed account of how hope emerges not simply as a cognitive orientation or motivational force but as a dynamic process interwoven with mindful organizing, emotional ambivalence, and collective sensemaking. The paper examines how resilience-making, as a hopeful organizational practice, is not solely the result of individual capacities or technical resources, but of psycho-social group processes activated in moments of breakdown. From a qualitative perspective, we analyse interviews to explore how collective practices in a resilience-making case -the 2010 Chilean miners’ crisis- express a hopeful mode of (self-) organizing, in which not only perseverance but also imagination is put to the service of reconstructing a viable future.

Palabras claves: Organizing hope, resilience, mindful organizing, crisis management, practices

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